The Old House
by ItTicklesLikeCrazy
Summary: Danny did not want to be here, in this charred out old shell of a house where he could feel his ghost sense tugging at the back of his throat and yet was unable to release it. He exhaled slowly, but his breath came out warm and invisible to his eyes, and he nearly snarled in frustration.


**This story is a part of the Birthday Story Extravaganza. Give me enough time and I'll put a link on my profile to a list of all fifteen BSE stories! Review a "Happy Birthday" and get my eternal appreciation.**

**This is a SuperPhantom story I've been working on for my BSE! I don't have a lot of commentary on it, because I think from just readng it you can figure it out. I really hope you like it.**

**ENJOY!**

Danny did not want to be here, in this charred out old shell of a house where he could feel his ghost sense tugging at the back of his throat and yet was unable to release it. He exhaled slowly, but his breath came out warm and invisible to his eyes, and he nearly snarled in frustration.

His eyes traveled down to his watch, which blinked innocently up at him with numbers he wished were higher displayed on it's screen. He still had hours, _hours_, until dark fell, and more hours after that to wait while his parents engaged in a meaningless ghost hunt in this old skeleton of a house with all these other crack jobs that had come as well.

Danny fished his phone out of his pocket and scanned the screen. _0 new texts_ it read, but Danny unlocked it anyway and scanned his messages. Just the same texts from Sam and Tucker when he'd first asked them to help him out of this stupid situation. Tucker's read:

**i dunno dude do u think u give off EMF cause u might b kinda screwed good luck & txt me if u need me**

Sam's read:

**sorry danny. i cant do anything my mum is going crazy. please be careful and call us if u need anything, k?**

Danny was happy that both his friends were concerned (as skewed as that was), but the fact that neither they nor he could do anything to get him out of this situation really sucked. At least he had Jazz, and hopefully when the sun went down the children would be able to evacuate the house so nothing ghost-related picked up on his energy signals.

Danny sighed out of exasperation as he slipped his phone back into his pocket, but shivered a little when the breath exited his mouth. It fogged out from his lips, faintly visible and tainted blue-white. Danny watched it, fascinated, and was relieved that his ghost sense had finally made it's appearance and was no longer sticking to the back of his throat like cold, ghostly fingers.

"What was that?" a woman near him asked, peering at him with eyes that looked a little too big because of her large spectacles. She had frizzy brown hair that surrounded her face and neck nearly to the point of smothering her, and had a brown knit sweater wrapped around her wiry form. Danny took a few steps back without realizing it before forcing himself to stand his ground.

"Nothing," he excused, faking a shiver. "Just a little cold, is all." He smiled softly at the woman, hoping it was reassuring, but she only took two large steps closer to him, _way_ too far into his personal space, and inspected him with her bespectacled eyes. She smelled like mildew, rotting carrots, and mothballs.

"It is rumored," she began speaking, squinting her huge eyes at him curiously. "That some children can pick up presences of the supernatural even better than engineered machines." Her voice was soft, lilting, and yet, Danny was not comforted by it at all. He wanted to take three giant steps back, get her weird mothball scent out of his nose, and frantically text Sam and Tucker to _pick him up right now, goddammit!_

"Mom!" a horrified voice shrieked, and Danny turned to see a girl, maybe a year older than him, standing with her arms stiff at her sides, her hands balled into fists. She seemed to be addressing the woman currently trespassing in Danny's personal space bubble, and at the same time, fighting a vicious blush that attacked her freckly cheeks.

Three other girls stood behind her, looking mildly horrified at the woman's behavior. One of them was Jazz, and when she saw Danny staring at her, she winked. Suddenly Danny was very glad to have a sister who could have his back, especially when weird older women were insinuating that he could sense ghosts.

The girl who had first spoken marched over to the woman and grabbed her by the upper arm, forcefully tugging her out of Danny's personal space. Danny couldn't help the look of gratitude that flooded his features when the woman's weird scent got out of his lungs and she stopped looking at him like she wanted to steal him in the night and use him as her personal ghost detector. "Thanks," he exhaled, feeling his muscles relax a bit. He smiled lopsidedly at the girl, and she returned the look before swiveling on her heel to face his sister.

"I'm _so_ sorry Jazz," she apologized, seemingly very sincere. She glanced back to the woman she was still holding, who was now frowning at her. "Me and mom are gonna go _talk_," she gave her mother a meaningful look, "about things, but I'll be right back." With that, she dragged her mother off to a quiet corner. A tall, dark-haired man saw where they were headed and joined them, and they started very loudly discussing things.

Danny grinned at Jazz, his relief palpable. "Thanks, Jazz," he said, smiling.

Jazz reached out and ruffled his hair, smiling fondly. "No problem, little brother," she said. "I'm probably a lot happier at this thing than you are, because there are other girls here who understand what it's like to have crazy parents!" She laughed, tilting her head back slightly. "That," she motioned after the girl who'd just dragged her mother off. "Was Jenna, and these," she motioned at the two other girls, "Are Melanie and Ricky." The two girls nodded at Danny, and Danny thought the one called Melanie winked.

"So what was it?" she whispered softly, so the others wouldn't hear. "Ghost sense?"

"Yeah," Danny replied, rolling his eyes. "But it was around for a while. I'm going to sneak off to have a look. Will you cover for me?"

Jazz scoffed. "As if you even need it. You could disappear for the entire day and I doubt they'd even notice. But yeah, I'll cover for you, _if _you need it." She prodded him with a finger to his side. "Go on, little brother."

Danny grumbled a little under his breath for show, but when Jazz turned away with a roll of her eyes, he stopped. Casually, he shoved his hands in his pockets and started glancing around the room. When he was sure nobody was watching him, he made, _casually,_ for the nearest exit. He got there without any other, er... mishaps, and ducked out of the main room before going invisible and changing into ghost form.

Danny paused, not daring to even breath, waiting for the high-pitched whine of EMF meters to go off. It didn't, which was a little puzzling, but Danny guessed that real ghosts just didn't give off EMF. That was really helpful, seeing as he wasn't going to have to explain how he was giving off EMF to his parents if somebody came too close.

Danny pushed off lightly from the ground, floating invisibly for a moment, before he set off at a gentle pace through the air, searching the house. He couldn't follow his ghost sense, really, because it was so weak, if Danny didn't know better, he'd say it was hardly a ghost. Even the Box Ghost sent out a more powerful feeling than this one. Or these ones. Because the slight pull seemed to be coming from everywhere, so either the house was literally a ghost, or there was more than one ghost.

Oh shit, ghost house. Was that actually a viable possibility? Danny hoped not.

After a quick perimeter check, and then a not-so-quick everything check, Danny still hadn't found the ghost or ghosts. Which was kind of obnoxious. He landed back down on the ground softly, letting himself change back to human invisibly, and then checking to make sure nobody was around before turning visible.

Danny nearly hurt himself flailing around when an unexpected voice exclaimed "WOW!" really loudly. Turning, he saw a girl peeking around the corner, and Danny _really_ needed to be more aware before changing back, because he would be in serious trouble if the girl wasn't translucent. She walked over to him, but Danny was pretty sure it was only an illusion of her feet hitting the ground. "Who are you?" she asked, and Danny noticed her speaking pattern was slightly lazy, the syllables slurring together. She stuck out a hand, grinning, and said, "I'm Isabelle."

"Hey," Danny greeted, shaking her hand. "I'm Danny." He'd be lying if he said he wasn't nervous, but his curiosity outweighed his cautiousness. Especially when the girl looked down at her hand with big blue eyes wide with awe.

"Wow!" said the girl. "You didn't go right through my hand! And you can see and hear me! What are you?"

"Uhh," Danny considered a number of responses before replying, "I'm half ghost."

The girl looked back up to him with her eyes so wide they looked like they might pop out of her head. "Half ghost? Golly, I didn't think that was possible! I'm full ghost! Do you want to be friends?"

Danny felt a smile tug at the edges of his lips. "Sure," he agreed.

"Still think this is a good idea, Sammy?" Dean taunted as they watched three different pairs of ghost "hunters" tackle a teenage boy wearing bed sheet. Several different ghost "hunters" swiveled and pointed weapons at the boy as he went down under the mass of people who had gone for him. "I mean," Dean continued, looking around the room. 'The only people missing are the Ghostfacers, and they're only absent because they were smart enough to know it was a scam."

"I get it, Dean," Sam growled out through clenched teeth. "But you and I both know this place is haunted, and it's better to be here and gather information when we're allowed here, instead of risking being arrested after hours. After that close call near Cincinnati, I think the cops are starting to believe that we can't be killed. It's better not to draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean grumbled. "I can't see how we're going to get any work done with these idiots bumbling around anyway."

The EMF meter in Sam's hand spiked up to four of the six bulbs glowing red, and didn't fall back to the normal one a few seconds. Sam shot Dean a smug look and followed the trail of EMF out of the room, into the hallway, where a fifth bulb lit up, and then down the hallway until a sixth bulb lit up right in front of the door to another room.

Sam and Dean exchanged cautious glances, listening to the soft murmur of voices on the other side of the door, before Sam pressed his hand flat against the ancient wood and pushed inward.

In the middle of the room stood a boy. Alone, with nobody else int he room, and his back was to Sam and Dean. At first glance, he seemed to be talking to himself, but the pauses he allowed, and the sway of the conversation, he obviously at least _thought_ he was talking to somebody else.

"it's nice to meet you," the boy said, putting out and hand and slightly shaking it up and down, as if he was shaking another person's hand. He had dark hair, and was wearing a white tee shirt and jeans.

The EMF meter whined again, and the kid wheeled around with a shocked look on his face. He took in Sam and Dean with wide eyes, glanced to either side at people Sam and Dean couldn't see, and then vanished into thin air. A few seconds later, the EMF wound down slowly. Sam and Dean glanced at each other with wide eyes, and then deflated a little, because they knew this new piece of information was probably going to require research.

Sam and Dean did do the research. They researched every single person who had ever died that was connected to the house somehow. None of them were teenage boys with dark black hair and blue eyes. None of them were recent enough to have been wearing modern clothes like the boy's had been. None of them remotely matched the boy they saw, which was actually really frustrating.

Still, Sam and Dean were ready to sneak into the house two nights from now and throw some salt around while wielding iron crowbars, just in case they could find out anything more. Or if the boy's body was, for some reason, inside or near the house. Well, at least they were until they saw him talking to a pretty redhead like the most normal thing in the world.

Both brothers were immediately on guard, but also puzzled. It wasn't unheard of for ghosts to communicate with living people casually, especially if they were young and somewhat benevolent, but in a room full of ghost hunters, even incompetent ones...? Unlikely, to say the least, and very, _very_ strange. More so when the girl put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder, and it looked like regular flesh-on-flesh contact.

The brother's edged closer, sharing a meaningful glance. They heard the tag end of what the girl was saying to the boy, "...should be fine for them, especially since everybody at this gathering seems even worse at hunting ghosts than Mom and Dad, and they can hardly get a handle on the Box Ghost!"

The boy smiled at the girl, looking a little sheepish, but with an underlying theme of worry. "I guess you're right, Jazz. I just can't help but feel nervous, you know? I don't want anything to happen."

The girl nudged the boy with her shoulder, smiling softly. "Of course I'm right, little brother. I'm always right. And don't worry, in a few hours there will be dozens of disappointed ghost hunters trailing out of this place because they didn't pick up on any 'spiritual energies' or whatever."

The boy, the girl's younger brother assumably, smiled lopsidedly, his shoulders relaxing marginally. "Yeah, thanks Jazz. It's just, those two who came in on me..."

The girl-Jazz-jabbed her brother in the ribs with a finger. "Quit worrying!" she demanded. "Nothing's going to happen."

Just as those words left her mouth, a high pitched whine came from several locations all across the room, followed quickly by shouts of excitement from the ghost hunters holding the whining EMF meters. Each started walking around the room, waving the electro-magnetic frequency measures around wildly to find where the EMF was the strongest. The girl's brother's crystal blue eyes widened as they landed on the corner of the room, and he took long strides to the corner, leaving his sister behind. The redheaded girl shrugged before wandering off as well.

Sam and Dean followed the boy at a respectable distance, carefully staying close enough to eavesdrop but far enough that it didn't look like they were stalking the kid. He was hissing in a muffled whisper to the seemingly empty corner, and Sam and Dean exchanged looks before straining their ears over the whine of the EMF meters to hear anything they could of the whispers.

What they managed to hear didn't make much sense when put together. "What are...you shouldn't be...danger...catch...kind of...worry...ridiculous...fear...don't understand...just go." Those last words were spoken with clear conviction, at a volume just a tad higher than what the before whispers had been in. The EMF rapidly died down after those two words, and Sam and Dean had seen enough to know that that couldn't be just a coincidence, _especially_ after they'd seen the boy disappear into thin air.

The boy turned around, and his crystal blue eyes landed on them, widening in shock and recognition. He glanced back to the still empty corner guiltily, before looking back to them suspiciously, like he was wondering if they'd seen and/or heard any of that. He bit his lip when Sam and Dean gave him unimpressed faces, and slowly started making his way out of the main room, obviously meaning for them to follow. The brothers exchanged a quick glance before deciding to comply, if only to sate their newly arisen curiosity to find out what the hell was going on with the strange boy.

The door shut lightly behind them, and the boy was standing with his right side facing them, to make him a smaller target without being obvious. "Uh, hi," he said, nervously.

"Hey," Sam said, a kind smile gracing his features. He motioned tot he doorway behind them, vaguely in the direction of the corner the boy had been talking to.

The boy blinked, looking unavoidably guilty in that innocent little kid sort of way. The look little kids pulled when they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "So, you may have noticed, heh, Icankindofseeghosts." He glanced to his right, frowning at the seemingly empty air, before making a rude face and turning back to the brothers. "Please say you're not going to kidnap me and use me as your own person ghost detection device?"

Sam and Dean exchanged puzzled looks. The boy was the psychic son of two over enthusiastic ghost hunters, so a question like this may not have been too out of the blue, but still. How were they going to approach this?

**Any questions or comments? Leave them in the review box (signed review, please) and I'll try to reply to the best of my ability. I've been putting half-assed authors notes on all my BSE stories today so I really hope you don't mind me not trying to answer any questions in the upper authors note like I usually do. I hope you liked it, and UNTIL NEXT TIME!**


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